


Blue

by orphan_account



Series: Colors [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Artist!Levi, M/M, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 03:59:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5149481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi never understood why people linked blue to sadness</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little thing I cooked up for my bestest friend in the whole wide world, since we're both suckers for Eruri and misery. Hope you like it Ral!!! And I do hope it's not too cheesy, teehee.

Levi never understood why people linked blue to sadness. He never understood why, as his brush pecked at a shade of cerulean to match that of the shoes he was painting, people described being sad as 'having the blues'. His eyes flicked between the shoes and his canvas, dabbing at the grainy surface, carefully filling in the outline of the shoes's glimmering image.

Perhaps that was because, to Levi, the color blue brought memories of the blue and white vases, jars, and plates in his mother's Porcelain shop. They were so beautiful. So Alluring. Always calling Levi to touch them; to run his hands across the decorated surface of the milky porcelain. Yet he never dared to do so. Not even as the curious child he was known to have been at the time. Levi was afraid they would break. Not so much because he would drop them, but rather that they would crumble under the mere touch of his bony fingers. Levi never found out why he'd had those feelings, nor why they hadn't left him as he grew up. Beautiful things just seemed so delicate.

He had never been good at handling delicate things. 

And from then on, blue to Levi was fragile beauty. So delicately shuddering under the human gaze in a way no one but the attentive could see. It reminded him of porcelain skin, and the way his hands fluttered over it as if fearing it would break under his shy fingers. With those memories rang a sound, an amused chuckle as deep as the cellos he painted to when he was alone and ached for anything to break the silence. He pushed all those memories to the back of his mind, and with them the aching in his jaw.

Levi looked back up from his canvas, eyes trailing from the sparkling sapphire shoes up to the cobalt blue dress, hanging just a little above their rims without quite brushing them. He looked over to his pallet, mixing two shades to get the appropriate blue before returning to his canvas with tentative strokes. 

To Levi, the color blue brought back memories of the building blocks in different shades of that color. They belonged to the boy he used to babysit when he was fifteen. The boy whose jade eyes were fiery as he focused on perfecting his towers to standards that existed only in his six year old mind. Levi's eyes would always wander from the homework he'd had to work on to the boy and his furrowed brow and burning eyes. Then Levi would look to whatever the boy had been building, and he would try, but never succeed, to see what the boy saw. He could never understand said perfection standards which the boy seemed to almost stress over at times.

And from then on, the fragile beauty of blue became mysterious. Something that could only be seen by the childish eyes people shed off as they got older. Levi continued his work on the dress, ignoring the images of a personality he could never quite grasp, never quite keep up with despite being of younger flesh and soul. He ignored the way his ribs twisted, and turned his eyes from the neckline of the dress to the slender neck it circled, and the deep, deep color of the blue opal necklace, standing stark against creamy skin. 

To Levi, the color blue brought back memories of a parisian night, one spent strolling under a star-daubed sky. He remembered lacing his delicate fingers with larger ones that seemed to engulf his hand whole. He remembered being pressed against the side of a warmer body as they walked down cobblestone streets. Every breath that came out of the cello-like throat drew Levi's lungs out with them. Every quirk of rosy lips and the breathy laughs that followed every snappy remark Levi hurls over one thing or another. Most of all, however, he remembered sitting atop the thick, stone railing of the bridge crossing The River Seine. The warmer body had leaned forward onto the railing right next to Levi; the cello throat blowing out streams of smoke into the gloved hands of night. 

_"I want to buy you a ring,"_

_Levi had snorted, eyes rolling at the notion, "I thought we'd agreed I was a hundred and fifteen percent against marriage?"_

_"It doesn't have to be an engagement ring," The cello hummed, not taking his eyes away from whatever he was looking at in the distance, "I just want to buy you something nice. Something silver to match the color of your irises. Or maybe white gold. Can you picture that? White gold with a tinge of silver; decorated with blue opal."_

_"You're so sappy, Erw--"_

_"You don't look at yourself in the mirror long enough. Maybe if you did, you'd understand why I'm so infatuated with you,"_

_"Sure I look long enough," Levi had snickered, "How else would I doll myself up for you?"_

_"I'm touched," The Cello hummed without the expected chuckle, "I'm still getting you the ring."_

_"If you do, I'll make you eat it. Not swallow. Eat. You'll crunch that 'blue topaz'."_

_"Oh come, Levi. Won't you let me have this one thing?"_

_"No."_

_"Why not?"_

_"Jesus, you're like a three year old brat."_

_"Could you at least answer my question?"_

_Levi hadn't, and the cello hand't pressed the matter further, only frowned and looked at Levi with swimming blue ey--_

Levi shuddered despite himself, tearing his mind's eye away from the memory. From all the memories. Blue was a color. It was as simple as that. Blue was not melancholy. Blue was not beauty or mystery or rings or whatever else. Blue was blue, like red was red, and yellow was yellow. It was a color. It came in plastic tubes that children would squeeze in the middle and smudge all over elaborate sheets of paper for their mother's to call 'art'. It was far from being poetic, just like every other color, just like every other one of his paintings. 

That's what he told himself. That's what drained every memory and every lingering sting of the color blue from his veins. He had a painting to finish now. The philosophy and emotional aspect of colors would have to be a subject he worried his mind about on some lonely, rainy day when even the cellos couldn't fill the empty silence. 

But then he raised his eyes from the slender neck and the opal beads, up to the a heart shaped face framed by strawberry blonde hair. He raised them up to glossy, pink lips and a small, beautifully carved nose. And then, encased in fluttering lashes, he saw the reason he'd this woman's face for last. Because her face held her eyes. 

And her eyes were blue. 

Blue. And to Levi, Blue brought back memories of lacquered eyes of a shade he could never recreate no matter the price or the quality of the paints he bought. A shade he could never name, nor had he dared try. Because putting a name to such beauty would felt like it could defile it. Because beauty was a mistress of many names, none of them fitting, all of them unworthy, _crude._

The blue eyes in his memories were beautiful and fragile. Swallowed in mystery. Blue was the porcelain skin that had burned and flushed. Porcelain he had been too reluctant to touch until it had gone cold, cold and he wasn't allowed to touch it anymore. Blue was the opal ring he'd often hear about, whispered in his ear in a dreamy drawl that made his eyelashes flutter and his lungs lose breath. The ring he kept turning down until there wasn't a finger to share it with anymore. Blue were the eyes that had smiled at him seconds before the world stopped, and a loud ringing sounded in his ears as the car he and the blue eyes were in was thrown to the far side of the road when some madman had crashed into them. Blue was what he saw in the second he was supposed to see his life flashing before his eyes. 

Levi set his brush down, fearing his trembling hand would ruin a painting he'd promised the strawberry blonde woman ages ago. He didn't have to look back at her eyes to know of the concern flashing in them as she softly called out his name to make sure everything was alright. And as he did every single time, Levi shrugged off her worries, made them seem meaningless as he wiped his paint stained hands with an old rag. Of course he was fine, he told her. She was being silly. He was just tired after all this work. 

The strawberry blonde hair did not argue -probably knew better than to do that-, and he ended the session with the promise he made every time. That he'd stop perfecting the other details of the painting, and start on the eyes the very next time they met. She did not argue. Only gave a weak attempt at a smile, then tweaked her necklace so it wouldn't tangle in her hair, smoothed down her dress and shifted on her sapphire shoes. 

He waited for her to leave before he sat down at the foot of his canvas. He waited for the door to click shut behind her cobalt blue dress before he let the blue in the painting, in the bottles of paints, and in his memories drown him. He let his vocal strings moan, even with his lips pressed shut, and the tears fill up unblinking eyes. 

 

Blue brought back memories of blue eyes going grey. Blue brought back memories of a once warm bed made large and cold. Blue was the laugh he couldn't hear anymore when he made snappy comments at whatever took his fancy. Blue were the ghosts of the times they slow danced to the same cellos he now used to clutter the silence. Blue was everything that made his jaw ache, that tightened his throat, that twisted his ribs, and tore his heartstrings one by one. 

 

And he finally understood why blue was linked to sadness.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! All comments are appreciated. Tell me what you think!
> 
> One more thing, the ring part was part of an RP Ral and I had a while ago. *Sighs dreamily* Her Erwin is just to die for...


End file.
